Page 60 of How To Survive This Fairytale

Eyes wide, you stare at her, this witch who looks so much like you.

I’ve been eating the house.It’s… changing me.

“Youstupid prince,” she sneers, “what have youdone?”

Nothing but hate in her eyes when she looks at you.But then shelooks at you, and seeing you halts whatever wicked revenge she was planning.She stares at you the way you stare at her.That syrupy sense of time spirals around you, catching you both in its web of lost years.

“Hansel?”She comes to the edge of the porch.“Hansel.”Magic ripples in her wake, so thick you can see it in the air.“Hansel, you came back.”

The gun goes off.Did you pull the trigger?You must have, but your fingers are numb.Blood blooms where you hit her diaphragm.The huntsman trained you to put out the left eye of a fly… But the shock of her screwed your aim, and you hit too low.

Her wide eyes, which are your wide eyes, keep staring at you.She stumbles back against the doorframe.“Hansel, wait, don’t,” she rasps, “It’s me, your sis?—”

You shoot again, and this time, you strike her heart.A moment of shock, and then her body slumps.With it, a horrible creaking fills the air.The chimney falls first—crumb by crumb—and then the roof sinks in, all that icing melting to a thick, disgusting goo.Your sister’s body melts and bubbles like a cauldron’s boil.You step back, away from the walls as they totter, then you turn and break into a run.The house falls down, and just as you leap onto the back of your horse, the earth opens, swallowing the whole thing, the whole foundation, and you kick your horse into a run, a run, it’s the only thing you can do, run,just?—

Keep—

Running—

* * *

It is hard to say how far you ride before you stop your horse, dismount, and vomit into the mossy roots of the nearest tree.

Gretel.Was that really Gretel?Had she been alive all this time?And with the witch?Was she cursed, like you, to do a monster’s gruesome bidding?

You stumble toward another tree—one you have not soiled—and lean your full weight against it.Your stomach tightens, threatening another purge, but none comes.Slowly, you slide down against scratchy bark to sit in the grass and hold your head in your hands.

How could Gretel have survived the oven?

That question slows your panicked spiral.There is no way she could have survived it.Which means whatever wore her face and spoke your name was not your sister.An illusion of her, maybe.A witch’s trick designed to lure you to your doom.

But could a witch’s trick bleed as she did?

Fifty-Five

You knowyour husband well enough to know where he would have taken two children lost in this part of the wood.

When you have recovered enough to travel again, you find him back at the lake, with the girl and the boy playing in the shallows.He sees you first and runs to you.Seeing the ashes of your eyes, he smooths your hair behind your ears and asks no questions.

“It’s over now,” you say.“For good.”

“Hello!”calls the boy.Ankle-deep in the water, he waves to you with his arm over his head.“Mr.Cyrus said you’re going to help us safely through the wood.”

“Yes,” you say.“That we will.”

“Could we eat something first?”asks the girl.“Roland and I haven’t eaten in days.”

“Or drank,” says Roland.“Well, that’s not right, Ididdrink the lake water, but not until I got here!I nearly drank from a river that told me it would make me into a tiger, but Else stopped me.Then I almost drank from a river that told me it would make me a wolf, I wasso thirstyI didn’t care but Else stopped me again.Then we met Mr.Cyrus, and he said he knew a lake that wouldn’t turn me into anything, and I didn’t believe him at first because I thought it would make me half-bird, but he was telling the truth!”

You smile, despite yourself.A grim smile.How close Roland and Else were to repeating a terrible story.They have no idea how close it was.You think, perhaps, it’s best to keep it that way.

“Sounds like you’ve had quite the adventure,” you say.

“I don’t want an adventure,” Else murmurs.“I want to gohome.”

“No one wants us there, Else,” says Roland.“If we can’t have a home, we might as well have an adventure.”

Cyrus looks at you, and you look at him.Maybe, you say without saying, and he nods, feeling the same.Maybe, just maybe, a ghost of a maybe, a maybe made out of mist.Maybe.And every day for the next six months, as you travel home, that maybe becomes more solid, more real, until it becomes aYesin your heart, in Cyrus’s heart, in Else’s heart and Roland’s heart, and your garden suddenly has two more sets of hands to help it grow.

An Epilogue

This story endsthe way an earlier one couldn’t:

With the fathers leading their children out of the woods.